There's a fundamental design flaw with the extended leather door cards in that some of the leather is actually outside, since the weather seal is actually on the card itself. On most examples this manifests itself in the leather discolouring and peeling off the back of the door card as the glue gets wet, then it shrinks as it dries and pulls tight. This pushes the weather seal further off the door, compromising the seal, and so the cycle continues.
This one is an extreme example of that problem. It's lived outdoors all its life, drains blocked, crud in the door shuts, and the leather has just rotted away.
I'm researching a way of fully waterproofing this portion of the leather in order to prevent this from happening. Most waterproofing agents have an optical impact on the leather though, mostly adding gloss, so its a matter of finding a product which is effective enough without looking obvious.
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